Fortunately Perry is already political roadkill.
Crane
Then again, Pell Grants (name, not acronym) already existed, as the BEOG, shortly before the present Department was constituted. So Perry could always propose just re-coalescing HEW for all the good it would do.
DoCommerce has been around since 1903 (created by that radical enemy of business, Teddy Roosevelt;)) and was one of those departments created to gather together a whole bunch of immediately useful and important functions that had been previously scattered across different parts of the federal government (a-la Homeland Security). Since for the first 10 years of its existence it was called the Department of Commerce and Labor, he again could claim the idea is to reconstitute the original entity (which some Republican in the Senate has actually filed a bill for).
Thing is, Big Federal Government did not look much different and the clientele did not notice much difference after DoEd and DoHHS spun off, from when it was all under HEW. And the Commerce “Department” per se is not such a huge item, being more of an umbrella organization that keeps under one same roof a number of important (and sometimes constitutionally mandated) services that would have to continue existing (and being paid for). It’s not a government’s departments or agencies as such that should be cut or eliminated (or expanded or created) to achieve a goal, it’s the actual programs they run.
As Homeland Security reminds us, changing names and moving things around different boxes in the organization chart does not itself a reform make – and undoing one such reform-of-form with another reform-of-form solves nothing.
Finally, something Perry and I agree on:
Bill White was Mayor of Houston for three terms–only three because of term limits. He was pretty well-liked.